When Zainab Salau, a BSIS junior, accepted a summer position at Articulate Labs, she entered a world where software meets wearable healthcare. The company’s flagship product, KneeStim, is a compact, sensor-filled knee brace that records patient metrics during rehabilitation. Tasked with the data-backbone of this device, Zainab’s mission was to translate raw clinical measurements into a clean, queryable structure while ensuring that doctors, therapists, researchers, and patients each accessed only what they needed.
Her journey began through the Discovery Partners Institute’s Summer Tech Internship Program, a pipeline that matches eager students with local startups. Although Articulate Labs was unfamiliar to her at first, the blend of hardware and health tech resonated with Zainab’s academic interests, prompting her to submit an application that would soon evolve into a hands-on learning experience.
Building the backend for KneeStim
The core of Zainab’s work revolved around constructing a normalized database schema capable of handling the device’s multifaceted clinical data. She started by dissecting the product’s data dictionary, turning each measurement category into a distinct table and mapping relationships through an entity-relationship diagram. This systematic breakdown mirrored strategies she had honed while competing in cybersecurity challenges, where large attack surfaces are split into manageable components.
Database design and implementation
Using Python’s SQLAlchemy library, Zainab wrote SQL statements to create and populate a multi-table structure that respected data integrity and minimized redundancy. She also crafted queries that allowed rapid extraction of patient progress reports, a critical feature for clinicians seeking real-time insights. Each step required translating medical terminology into relational concepts—a process that deepened her understanding of both healthcare standards and database theory.
Secure interface development
Beyond the data model, Zainab built a lightweight Python GUI wrapper that served as a gateway for stakeholders. The interface incorporated role-based access control, granting surgeons full data visibility, therapists limited read/write permissions, researchers anonymized datasets, and patients a view-only portal. Implementing this hierarchy demanded careful handling of authentication tokens and audit logs, reinforcing the principle that security must be baked into every layer of a medical-tech system.
The ecosystem at mHub and career takeaways
Articulate Labs operates out of Chicago’s mHub, the city’s largest hardware-focused innovation campus. Sharing a floor with robotics firms, consumer-electronics startups, and other medical-device ventures created a vibrant backdrop for spontaneous collaboration. Zainab recounts informal coffee-break conversations that introduced her to concepts like rapid prototyping, supply-chain logistics, and regulatory pathways—areas she had scarcely explored in a purely software curriculum.
Cross-disciplinary exposure
Being surrounded by engineers, designers, and product managers transformed Zainab’s view of what “tech” entails. She learned to speak the language of hardware tolerances, to appreciate the constraints of FDA documentation, and to recognize how a well-crafted firmware stack influences backend data quality. This broadened perspective proved valuable when she later presented her work to non-technical audiences, who could now see the tangible link between a patient’s motion and the numbers stored in her database.
Networking advice for future interns
Reflecting on her path, Zainab stresses that relationships matter more than résumés. The DPI program kept her connected to mentors who later provided introductions, references, and interview tips. She advises students to nurture contacts—even those they haven’t spoken to in months—because a past professor or club advisor might have a direct line to a dream employer. Proactive outreach, coupled with a willingness to ask for help, turns a solitary problem into a collaborative solution and shortens the time it takes to secure an internship.
Ultimately, Zainab’s summer at Articulate Labs blended technical rigor with community immersion, delivering a robust backend for a cutting-edge rehabilitation device while equipping her with the soft skills needed to thrive in any tech ecosystem.
